IT seems strange today, but even as recent as 50 years ago a “bottle bank” might be the sort of place Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would raid in search of a decent Chardonnay. Anyone storing glass bottles to reuse would be considered a suitable case for a shrink.

Yet nowadays hardly a supermarket car park is complete without whole array of recycling bins for everything from glass and paper to old boots and shoes.

Back in 1979, in a far-sighted piece for its day, a former colleague on the paper, Geoff Ward, who drove stock cars to destruction in his spare time so was used to smashing things, wrote that Hereford-Worcester County Council was considering introducing the Glass Manufacturers’ Federation initiative of Bottle Banks. The idea was for the public to to fill skips with old bottles so they could be taken to a treatment plant for crushing and recycling.

“The glass industry believes that all (his italics) waste should be reclaimed if viable means of doing to can be found,” he said. “The GMF says the ‘Bottle Bank’ idea is a significant step in creating a new awareness among the general public that natural resources are limited and should be conserved.”

The one local fly in the ointment was that initially Worcester City Council refused to join in, fearing that “glass only” skips would be a magnet for any other rubbish that would fit.

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However, Bill Allington, who had a home in Worcester but was also on the county council, said: “ It’s got to come and if we are sensible we will go ahead and strongly support it. I am surprised the city of Worcester turned it down. I am sorry they did and I think it was a mistake. A large number of people would welcome the scheme here.”

Fortunately, or maybe inevitably, Worcester City Council saw the light and in 1984 the city became the first place in the Midlands to launch “space age” plastic bottle banks, as opposed to the metal skip type. Clusters of three modular bottle bins in white, brown and green were installed at 15 locations around the city in what was called “a pioneer move for waste recycling”.

The scheme was launched by the chairman of the environmental committee Councillor Arnold Bryan, who had to be supplied with a wine bottle for the ceremony because he was teetotal.

Today there are eight sites spread across the city which accept glass, ranging from the large household recycling centres run by Worcestershire County Council in Bilford Road and in Horsford Road, off Hallow Road, to others at the Dines Green shops in Gresham Road, by the Homebase store in Hylton Road, Tesco supermarket on Warndon Villages and University of Worcester St John’s campus.

Come the 21st century and Worcester has well and truly invested in the Bottle Bank.